Blood Soaked and Contagious (20 page)

I admit, after the day I’d had, I was feeling a little bit more vulnerable than usual. There was a lot of appeal in having someone that close to me, even if I was less sure about what my larger plans ought to be. One night probably wouldn’t make a world of difference in whether I stayed, left, tried to rescue Bajali, or just gave up entirely.

Beyond my special skills at mayhem, I was also incredibly good at cutting myself off from people who offered me some kind of comfort. Being close to people who might hurt you or be taken away from you by viruses or undead friends was a horrible risk. I’d learned the price of not being the kid my parents wanted me to be, and I paid it every day by letting myself be close to people and risking that I’m not who they want to have close to them.

This woman, the spunky little sister of my erstwhile friend, Shawn “Kidney Poker” Cooper, didn’t seem to mind having me around. I didn’t really care to think about it any more deeply than that. Instead, I watched her shift my den around to suit her idea of what our sleeping arrangements ought to look like. It was a bit like watching someone rearrange your kitchen.

Is this the sort of thing they talk about when someone says your life needs “a woman’s touch”? It was creepy.

She helped me down onto the floor, and I started to make myself as comfortable as I’d likely be able to get.

“Frank?”

“Mmm?”

“Are you really telling me you’re going to sleep in your mostly clean jeans?”

“Well, I didn’t want to scandalize you,” must think fast, “or anyone by assuming otherwise.”

“Take off the jeans. You can keep your boxers on,” and she stuck her hand out to receive my pants.

“How did you know about the... oh, you watched me get taped up again. Right.” I handed her my pants and I had a moment of not-quite déjà vu.

I’ve had interactions with people where it doesn’t feel as though I’ve done that very same thing before, but more like an alternate universe quietly slipped into that moment and I could see the other side. I saw her, older, smiling, and reaching for my hand. Smile lines on her face, twenty or thirty pounds more, and gravity working differently on her curves. Then the universe snapped back into place as she took my jeans, folded them, and draped them across the back of my chair.

She must have noticed I was watching her very intently and stuck her tongue out at me. Then she did something that caused me to focus much more tightly on her. She took her shirt off.

Then she took off her pants.

Matching green lacy stuff. Tasteful. It wasn’t the decoration, but the form underneath that made me want to howl, pound my chest, and kill a woolly mammoth in hopes she would drag me back to her cave.

“Been a while, huh?” She was looking back at me with one hand on her hip in the classic country style, eyebrow raised, and the sort of smirk that could mean either a frying pan will meet your cranium shortly, or she was just amused. Thankfully, I had no frying pans in my living space.

Weapons? Yes. Frying pans? No. Why was I less afraid of clubs, bludgeons, knives, axes, swords, two naginata, my Man Scythe, and several handguns than I was of a frying pan upside the head? This woman was bending my outlook on the world! No fair!

“Quite.”

“Well, remember two major things. I will turn your nipples into doilies if you get out of line, and you are in no physical condition to even consider foreplay with me, much less anything else.”

“Bu—”

“Don’t say a word.” She cut me off like castrating a young bull: quickly, efficiently, and with the ease of lots of practice.

I didn’t make a peep.

She got down onto the floor, rolled over onto the sleeping bag, and pulled the covers up to her neck. I was still sitting up after surrendering my jeans, and I couldn’t take my eyes off her. Then I realized she was watching me.

“So, are you going to sleep sitting up, or are you gonna come down here?”

My brain locked up, along with my jaw and tongue. I gave up, and allowed the universe to do with me what it appeared to want to do. I scooted down as carefully as I could, pulled the blankets over myself and ended up looking her right in the eyes.

Sometime during dinner, the light outside had faded to darkness, but my eyes had adjusted and I could see pretty well in the quarter light of the room. I saw a new expression on her face, and it wasn’t the brash one to which I’d started to become accustomed. This was more wary and sad.

“Frank, I want to ask a favor of you, and I really would like to keep it just between you and me. Are you okay with that, or should I not ask?”

“Charlie, I think I owe you. Whatever you need to ask won’t go any further than me.”

She took a deep breath. “I need someone to hold me for just a little while. That’s all. I’ve been running hard for months now and I’m just about tapped out. If you can swing some really good ‘Charlie’s a great person’ improv with the cuddle, I’d be really grateful for that, too.”

What else was I going to do for someone who helped me take a bath?

I slipped my right arm under her head, and pulled all of her close to my chest. I felt tension in her body that I couldn’t see, and I truly wished I’d studied massage in my travels.

I started the way she asked for it. “Charlie’s a great person. I don’t think I’ve ever been taken care of so well by anyone in my entire life.” I held her a little more tightly, and I kept up my improv motivational speaking for a long time. Somewhere in between the giggles, a tickle or two, and tears, she relaxed and fell asleep.

I did the same.

Sunlight was burning a hole in my eyelid. But what woke me up was someone quietly calling my name, or at least I thought that’s what I was hearing.

“Frank. Frank. Wake up. I need talk to you.” Something passed between the sunlight on my eyelid and the sun. Shadow. Movement.

I opened my eyes and looked down the room toward the window, which was open. Someone or something was crouching on the floor in the shadow underneath the beam of morning light. I was half naked and unarmed, and there was a voluptuous blonde pinning my other arm to the floor.

“You want to tell me who you are before I get up and kill you?”

“No, not kill me yet. Bajali send me.” It was a slightly quavering voice. Everything in my head clicked, and my blood turned to ice.

“Mister Yan?”

“So. So. Yes. Sorry to visit you bedroom like this. Bajali find me, ask me to tell you.”

“You’re dead.”

“Ay. Yes. I dead. Very sad. Very sorry. Frank, you always my favorite. Please not tell Chunhua I here. Okay?”

“I won’t tell Grandmother Yan you were here.” I was scanning the room to find the nearest weapon in case I had to move quickly. I didn’t rate my chances very high for two reasons. Number one, he’d gotten the drop on me. Number two, he had been a lifelong practitioner of several different styles of Chinese martial arts. As a zombie, he would be even faster than he had been in the prime of his life.

“So. Thank you. You always my favorite. Bajali tell me to find you an say project goes very slow. Hightowah think of new plan. Maybe poison water supply. Also, they come try an kill all you soon. Think all you dangerous.”

“When?”

“Maybe three, four day. Not good.”

“No.” Then I really had to ask, “Mister Yan, why did you come to see me for Baj?”

“Ay-yah. Frank, I dead. I do not like. I love all of you. I love Chunhua. I do not want you all hurt, dead, maybe like me. Baj find me in the crowd. We talk and make plans, then Baj tell me to see you.”

“I’ve missed you.” I never got to say anything to him before they took him from us. He was a sweet person and a good neighbor.

“Oh, I miss everybody so much! Maybe you tell Chunhua you know I love her?”

“Of course I will. Are you going to go back to them?”

“No. I go away. I not eat another person. I go now. Remember, you most favorite. Good man.”

“Goodbye Mister Yan.”

He went out the window and shut it behind himself. The soul of politeness, even as a zombie.

“Frank?”

“You were awake for that?”

“Yeah, from about the point when he told us we’d be attacked in three or four days.” Charlie sat up, and blood started to flow back into my right arm. “You’re not going to go after him, are you?”

“No. See? About two weeks after he was taken from us, we installed anti-personnel IEDs around the neighborhood. There are seven of them and four tripwire triggers,” I was interrupted by a muffled explosion that shook the windows in my room, “between here and the road. I think he found one.”

“Should we get up?”

“No. Someone else can handle picking up the unidentifiable pieces. I want to stay here and remember him for a little while before I have to face everyone.”

My right arm came back to life, and we sat there in silence for a little bit. She looked a little uncomfortable, which wasn’t surprising considering she didn’t know Mister Yan or any of the history involved. I came to a conclusion. Either I had to start moving or I would end up sitting there all day and we’d lose precious time.

“Charlie, are you planning to stick around for a few days or are you going to head elsewhere in the next 24 hours or so?” The concept of her being more to me than a friend’s sister seemed like it came out of the blue. “Because, if you stay, there are a few things I need to know.”

“I’m not going to take that question the way it seemed to come out, because I am not a coward. I came here to live with my brother, and that’s what I plan to do, come Hell or high water.”

“All right.” Hearing that cheered me up a lot, but I had to file the cheer away for later. “Have you had any professional combat experience or training? Any preference for weapons?”

“Second degree black belt in jujitsu. We all hunted with Dad from the moment we could hold a shotgun. So, shotguns, bolt-action rifles, Japanese swords, 1911-style pistols, chain, and a steel pipe.” She looked thoughtful for a moment and added, “I also messed around with Mexican knife fighting with some of the migrant workers’ kids when I was growing up.”

The Libido Tabernacle Choir started a rendition of “I Can’t Stop Falling In Love With You.” Quixote, Sancho, and Sancho attacked them, beating them about the head and shoulders.

“Shiny. Next question: do you want the shower first or shall I?”

“That’s a Hell of a cognitive shift there, Frank. I’ll just wipe myself off if you want to shower, or I can stand guard for you if you’ll do the same for me.”

I pointed to the chest of drawers by my desk. “Pistols and revolvers in the top drawer. There’s ammo in the second drawer. Knives are in the third drawer. Unusual stuff lives in the bottom drawer. Go crazy. You can guard me first.” I figured I might as well leer a little bit. “I’ll guard your body while you’re naked and wet.”

“You are one sick puppy. Now you want me to fish around in your drawers for your gun. Should I be worried it’s loaded?”

“My weapon is always loaded. Sometimes I pop the clip out just to look at my fresh rounds.”

We started laughing and ended up having a hug. She got up, rooted around in my drawer, cooed with delight, and pulled out my Desert Eagle. It was a shade too big for her hands, so she put it back, but she found my matched set of Taurus Judge revolvers.

“Frankie Clip o’ Rounds, do you have slugs for these?” Charlie asked that question with enough bedroom in her voice that the gang war in my loins ceased fire, perked up, signed a peace treaty, and broke out the popcorn.

“Yes, I do, Charlotte Sex Leprechaun—second drawer, left side, rear. Maybe 20 shells.”

“Damn, boy! You say the sweetest things!”

“Mmmm. Caveman speak firearm. Caveman take metal stick.” I shook the Man Scythe with meaning and prehistoric gravitas. The blade opened just slightly. I think it was eager. “You toss Caveman Glock, maybe?”

She did toss it. It made me infinitely grateful that I put the safety on before I store my guns.

We scrambled down the stairs, laughing like little kids. For a while I forgot how serious things were likely to get in the near future. I suspect the horsing around did the same for her, and I knew she needed it, if only because she came out here to be with her brother, not to find herself in the middle of a suburban gang war. Sometimes the universe has other things in store for you when you think you’ve made a safe choice.

I did notice something disturbing, but not about her. I was moving a lot more easily than I had the night before.

She gave me a funny look when I put my weapons on the concrete floor, and I motioned for her to do the same. She did. I looked her in the eye and asked for a two-part favor.

“Would you peel the bandages off, then look at my back and tell me if it looks better than it did yesterday?” I turned around.

“Oh, fuck me,” she said once the bandages were off. I had a lot of opinions on that comment, but I let them go.

“I guess it looks better then?”

“Yeah. The bruising is gone. Completely gone. None of the skin is even pink, except around the stitches.”

“All right. Favor, part two. Poke me where Shawn did yesterday, would you?”